Note Back to Main Text — MEMOIRS, &c. &c. (continued 5)

Their partisans, their emissaries, their known agents (M. de Vitrolles and others) had asserted, that the King, ascribing the revolution of the 20th of March to the faults of his ministry, would shut his eyes to all that had passed; and that a general absolution would be the pledge of his return, and of his reconciliation with the French. This consolatory assertion had already surmounted the repugnance of many; when the proclamations of the 25th and 28th of June, issued at Cambray, made their appearance[87]. These in fact acknowledged, that the ministers of the King had committed faults; but, far from promising a complete oblivion of those committed by his subjects, one of them, the work of the Duke of Feltre, on the contrary announced, "that the King, whose potent allies had cleared the way for him to his dominions, by dispersing the satellites of the tyrant, was hastening to return to them, to carry the existing laws into execution against the guilty."